The Unalaska Planning Commission's monthly meeting was postponed this week due to a lack of quorum; the Commission plans to continue the meeting next Thursday, Feb. 25.
On the agenda is a request for a conditional use permit for a UniSea project. The fish processing company is asking the city for permission to create a temporary rock quarry; rock from the quarry will be used in rebuilding the company's G1 dock facility.
In late 2015, the city renewed its tideland lease with UniSea to pave the way for the company to upgrade and expand its dock on Iliuliuk Harbor. Rather than ship in costly raw materials for the project, UniSea wants to use rock from its own land in the dock expansion.
UniSea CEO Tom Enlow says the company plans to start demolishing the old G1 dock and create the rock quarry at the same time.
Enlow says the new dock won't look like the old one.
"We're going to go with a different design, instead of a piling dock, we'll have a sheet pile, open cell concept design, much like we have with the rest of our dock over at UniSea," Enlow said. "And so this will require a backfill of rock to fill in the area there, and then, of course, create some space that will be all concrete on top."
Grande says the rock quarry project requires a conditional use permit because it is considered a natural resource extraction.
"It is listed as a conditional use, explicitly in the code for that zone, which is marine-related industrial, but just has to be reviewed on a case by case basis, which is why we are reviewing it here," in planning, said Grande.
Grande says the rock quarry will be blasted out of the hillside behind company housing.
"It's behind the Attu Building at UniSea, which is the tall one...so it's just in that area where you would access sort of near the museum, across from the museum, you could drive in behind some the UniSea buildings," Grande explained. "And that is essentially where the hill is where the rock is going to be extracted."
Over a period of several weeks, UniSea workers who live in buildings adjacent to the planned quarry site will have to be temporarily relocated - up to 12 times.
"They will not be relocated in any permanent way. It does look like during the time frame when there is actually going to be blasting occurring, then people will have to be moved out of the building, I guess, up to an hour at a time," Grande said. "That is something that UniSea is going to working with the contractors on that to make sure the logistics work on that."
UniSea's contractor is Orion Marine Contractors, headquartered in Anchorage. When they are ready to start blasting, the Orion crew will periodically close Salmon Way and clear people from the nearby Ounalashka Corporation office and Museum of the Aleutians.
According to a planning commission staff report, Orion has agreed to do the blasting after office hours to minimize impacts.
Enlow says once the quarry project gets underway, locals can expect to hear a loud noise a couple times a day.
"It's going to be maybe a blast a couple of times a day, very similar to the kind of blasting that took place over at the wastewater treatment plant," Enlow said. "They'll put charges in and then once or twice a day they'll do a blast."
The Planning Department is recommending the Commission approve the company's permit request, as it found the rock quarry - and ultimately the G1 dock renovation project - "specifically makes UniSea’s tideland area more usable and economically productive. It also will create some flat land that may be usable for business or industry in the future."
Correction: an earlier version of this story stated UniSea's G1 dock is located on Margaret Bay, rather than the more accurate Iliuliuk Harbor. It has been corrected.
